This week, thousands of attendees descended upon New York City for Climate Week 2026 to hear about strategies to protect
Among them was a longtime financial advisor with stints at legacy firm under his belt:
In September 2024, the climate crisis hit home when Hurricane Helene ripped through his mountain town.
"People were killed and lives were swept down the river," he said. "I remember standing on the bridge and watching it because our house was up the hill, so we luckily didn't have any issues. We went down and saw this massive amount of water, just sliding through town — three-story buildings, where you could barely see the top."
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This past summer, severe heat waves, record-breaking flooding and other extreme weather events across the globe demonstrated his thesis that awareness of climate change is no longer enough and action must be taken.
Krull breaks his brand of investing into six pillars, including energy transition, infrastructure, water and transportation. At Climate Week, he presented a copy of his new book, "The Sustainable Investor," to Bill Nye (of "Bill Nye the Science Guy" fame). He also sat down with Financial Planning to discuss responsible investing in the 2026 landscape and why the reality of climate change means advisors and clients must rethink how they invest for retirement, including where they decide to live out their golden years.
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This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Financial Planning: Have you had somebody change their
Peter Krull: A good portion of our clients have, because they come to us specifically for what we do. Many people have been on autopilot for a long time, just in traditional investments. And suddenly, one day, they have an epiphany. When we can show them that the returns [of impact investing] are competitive, with traditional indexes and benchmarks or whatever the yardstick is, it's a no-brainer for them.
FP: What do events like the hurricane in Asheville teach you about client interaction around your messaging?
PK: Until [climate change] actually hits people at home, they're going to have a really hard time believing in the reality of it. In our fragmented media world, where you can only get the media that you care about getting, you're not going to necessarily get the story that says, "OK, the reason this hit Asheville is because of climate, and specifically because the Gulf was X number degrees warmer, there was this much percentage of humidity or water vapor in the air, which makes it more like all these things that actually there's a scientific basis to it." People aren't going to believe until suddenly they experience a landslide where their house gets swept away.
I learned that from an infrastructure perspective, we are nowhere near ready. We had a failure of our utility, transportation and communications infrastructure. We didn't have water for two months. We couldn't pick up the phone or get on the internet to connect with anybody, to find out even if my cousin across town was OK. Roads were literally washed into the river. I learned that infrastructure was so important.
FP: What trends do you see coming to the forefront of the climate conversation?
PK: Resilience is probably one of the most important themes that we're going to see in the investment industry [over] the next decades, because in a changed climate world, we're only going to see more and more intense storms.
FP: You've also "graduated" the socially responsible investing message.
PK: I realized that our definition was a bit out of date. So, I morphed SRI [socially responsible investing] a little into sustainable, responsible investing. It needs to be sustainable because we still need to reduce our impact. But it needs to transition to resilience.
We need to give resilience just as much of a stage as the sustainability side. And if we're not investing in innovation, we're probably not going to solve something of this magnitude. We may never solve it. But our best chance is by reducing impact, becoming more resilient and using innovation as an opportunity to contribute to stability and resilience.
FP: What does climate change imply for future retirement?
PK: There needs to be a lot more intentionality to it. In the past, we have set retirement on autopilot. You start saving and you retire [to] the fairy tale, if you will. But a couple things have changed, because you can't invest like you did yesterday using that set-it-and-forget-it mentality. If you're just
FP: What is it going to look like?
PK: It is going to be a cleaner, more resource-efficient, resilient and equitable economy. And it's not necessarily what you're going to find in the indices. You have to be more intentional about how you invest for solutions for the economy over the next several decades. So that's one side of it.
FP: And the other?
PK: The other side is: It's really important to know where the hell you're going to live. Because if you're on the coast of Florida, be prepared for your insurance rates to go up or for your insurance to be canceled. Be prepared for more intense storms.
Being in Asheville shows that there is no climate haven. So anywhere you are is likely to have some climate impacts. But there's a scale, so Florida's going to have a much higher chance of having climate impact. California and the West, where it's very dry, are going to have much greater climate impacts. So that idea of retiring and moving to Florida probably needs to shift a little bit.
When it comes to retirement, you are going to have to shift how you invest your money and where you see yourself ultimately settling.
FP: What about the approach of being insured and rebuilding while staying put?
PK: In Asheville, there are people still waiting to get their insurance checks from two years ago [and] we're also still waiting to get government funding. We really can't rely on that. The insurers know what's going on because they're canceling policies, they're making rates skyrocket. At the end of the day, insurers don't want to pay you if something happens. So they're going to do what they can to find a way to not pay. "Oh, was this wind damage or was this water damage? Well, you're not covered for wind damage, only water damage," or vice versa.
FP: How can advisors bring this message to client interaction and plan for the best outcomes?
PK: From a retirement perspective, people need to keep their eyes open and be more intentional. And advisors need to have frank conversations with their clients. Don't follow the nonscientific view that everything is going to be OK. Scientists know what they're talking about. And in fact, if anything, they have underestimated how bad the impacts are. We've hit 1.5 degrees [warmer] at this point and that's only going to get worse. Sea levels are only going to continue to rise. Storms and [temperature spikes] and fires are going to get more intense.
FP: What does sustainable, responsible investing look like right now?
PK: We like to look at it from a thematic perspective. I'm asking the question: "What are the industries, what are the themes that are really going to be valid and be driving that next economy?" And so in each one of our portfolios, we've got six basic themes. Now, there's obviously subthemes under each one, and they all fit into the sustainable, resilient and innovation framework. But you've got the energy transition. That's going to be one of the biggest ones right there. Our grid is not prepared, not only for the data center explosion, but just subtract that out. It's not prepared for growth. It's falling apart. Transportation, which is going to be moving towards the more electrified transportation system.
I think infrastructure is the biggest theme of the next several decades. Global X has a report card for U.S. infrastructure. And it was based on the American Society of Civil Engineers report, and the U.S. gets a C for infrastructure. Some things get D's, some things get B's, but for the most part, it gets a C. That is a massive investment that has to happen. So infrastructure is so important, especially with our experiences that happened in Asheville.
Water is another one. If you're in the desert, the Southwest or San Diego, water is going to be [an increasingly] bigger issue. Phoenix has paused [some new home building permits in the past] because they couldn't guarantee that they'd be able to run water to those new houses. It's "only" 100 degrees. And they have no water. Water's going to be a big issue.
FP: What makes something sustainable-investor-worthy?
PK: In my mind, it's all about solutions. Who's bringing solutions to the table? At the end of the day, if a hurricane hits you, the hurricane hits you. You could be in the Appalachian Mountains, or you could be in Tampa. That same storm hit both.
